Episode 1423: Interview with Roxanne Bocyck About What We Can Learn From The Past

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1423 of the

[00:00:04] Roxanne Bocyck: Inspired Stewardship Podcast. I'm Roxanne Bocyck. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, Develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to overcome fear and limiting beliefs and live your life is key.

[00:00:28] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

[00:00:45] One thing that fascinated me was just our own heritage about things. We all come from somewhere, right? Our ancestors. So just what these people did to take the risk to come to another country where they don't [00:01:00] speak your language. That was a big thing.

[00:01:06] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact others.

[00:01:39] In today's podcast, I interview Roxanne Bojcik. I asked Roxanne about her journey to discovering life lessons in her grandmother's story and the book that came from that. I also asked Roxanne to share with you how her faith journey intersected with this life journey. And Roxanne also shares with you some of the most important lessons she's learned that she shares in her book, [00:02:00] Catherine's Journey.

[00:02:02] I've got a new book coming out called Inspired Living. Assembling the puzzle of your call by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about it and sign up for getting more information over@inspiredstewardship.com. Inspired Living. That's inspired stewardship.com.

[00:02:23] Inspired living. Welcome to the show, Roxanne. So glad to be here, Scott. Absolutely. We, I shared a little bit in the intro about some of the things that you've done and of course you've got your new book out and all of this work that you've done to come to this place.

[00:02:43] But I always tell people that. I feel like intros are like the Instagram photos of our life we always make sure we frame everything just right when we're taking the headshots or the photos, but there's always more than that when we think about our journey and what brings us to that point.

[00:02:58] So would you share a little bit more [00:03:00] about your journey and what brought you to put out Catherine's Dream?

[00:03:05] Roxanne Bocyck: Sure, I'd love to, Scott. From a young age, I always wanted to be a teacher, but like many people life can distract us from our dreams, but they're always there inside of us. And I also enjoyed writing stories.

[00:03:18] In fact, I loved comic books and comic strips, and I would draw comics about what things I saw. So one day in middle school, I shared it with the teacher. Oh, look at my comics. And she was like, Oh yeah, those are nice, Roxanne, but You'll never make a living being a comic strip writer she just poo pooed my thing, and I believed her oh, okay.

[00:03:41] So after high school I did what I didn't have the opportunity to go to college. So I did what a lot of young women did. And in my day is I went and got a job at the local factory, ended up getting married and starting a family, but throughout the years being a teacher still.

[00:03:59] [00:04:00] And writing, it was always in me it was still bubbling there. So whenever I did whatever job I did have, I found a way to either teach by training new employees or write by offering to take notes at a meeting or some way incorporate writing in. So it's there so one time I had a job, I worked in a warehouse for 12 years and I had worked up the ranks.

[00:04:24] I became a forklift driver. But I knew there was something more. So remember how I told you I wanted to be a teacher. So I was like, where can I go where I can be around kids, and help them, but without a college degree. I know, I'll become a school bus driver. There we go. It worked out great because my kids are younger.

[00:04:49] I have the same days off as them. I get the summer off. But again, that writing was still within me. So I got a job at a local [00:05:00] newspaper writing weekly stories. So I would go to like town meetings or school board meetings and just summarize what was going on. And between, they'd give me 30 a story, but here I am at this meeting for two hours a night.

[00:05:15] And then the couple hours it took me to put the thing together. So I wasn't really getting rich. I wasn't quitting my day job. Let's just put it that way. So one year there was an opportunity to become a supervisor, an assistant supervisor at the bus garage. And I was like, Oh, this is great, but I'm going to need a resume and a cover letter.

[00:05:35] Now remember, I had jobs where you fill out the application. Okay, you're hired kind of thing. So I hired a girl named Terry to help me with my resume. And it worked. I got the interview, but I didn't get the job. I was bummed. I had started to take some adult education programs about writing and such. [00:06:00]

[00:06:00] With this resume now, I started applying for jobs like with writing and communication, but nothing was coming of it. One afternoon over coffee, Terry, she'd become a friend of mine. She said to me, Roxanne, what is it that you really want to do? And I go I've been in interviews and it would get down to I'd be a final candidate, but the person with the college degree would always win.

[00:06:26] And I'd be like, I've got to. I want to go to college. I want to take my writing more seriously. So she goes my niece goes to Syracuse university. You should go there. And I'm like, huh, what? In our neighborhood, Syracuse universities it's an elite college and it can be expensive.

[00:06:46] And I was like I didn't even pass algebra on high school. You think I can take classes at SU? She insisted we went down there. We walked around. I just fell in love with the place and come to [00:07:00] find out they had part time studies for adult learners like myself who were working another job and raising a family and guess what the one of the degrees was in, Scott?

[00:07:12] Writing. Writing and communications. So I became the school bus driver that went back to school. I was featured in their ad campaign. I was on a billboard. They filmed a commercial and the kids on my bus just loved it. It felt like they were in Hollywood or something so that was awesome.

[00:07:33] So after college, I did what every college graduate does, right? You go get a job in your field. Come to find out there's a company in Syracuse that writes curriculum and does things for school bus drivers, because school bus drivers need classroom training. It's required by the state. So I was excited.

[00:07:56] I got the job, but what I did, what I [00:08:00] knew, but I didn't think about. was that it's based on the contract that the company gets. They need to get the state contract. The year I was hired, guess what?

[00:08:11] Scott Maderer: They didn't get it. They

[00:08:12] Roxanne Bocyck: didn't get the contract. So that meant last one hired. First one to be let go.

[00:08:18] But I wasn't discouraged because I had my degree now I'm on this path. Like I say, I had different jobs over the years, but each time my skills would get better as a writer, as communicator. And then, of course, COVID came and I'd always known I had something bigger in me, like besides newsletters and website copy, I wanted to write a book.

[00:08:44] And Scott, I know that you coach people about getting out of debt and so they can live their dreams, right? We were in a place where we were out of debt. We still owed on our house, but we had an emergency fund. We had [00:09:00] savings. It's okay, it's now or never I got to write a book.

[00:09:06] And at that same time I had joined Dan Miller's Eagles community. And as what does Dan teach us about life? You want to be around the right people, right? Like minded people. And you need a coach sometimes. We need a coach to help us to that next level. So I ended up hiring a writing coach.

[00:09:27] Now, mind you it was we'll get to that question later when we talk about challenges, but the coach asked me my story ideas. I told him about the one about my grandmother and he said, that's the one we've got to write. So he taught me about character arcs and story arcs and as they say, the rest is history.

[00:09:49] And now I have a published book. So I'm very excited.

[00:09:53] Scott Maderer: So why did you, you just got to it at the end, but I want to unpack a little bit more. [00:10:00] Where did the idea of writing this story come from,

[00:10:05] Roxanne Bocyck: in the early 2000s, I learned a secret. Family secrets, right? They're out there about my green.

[00:10:13] Scott Maderer: No, families don't have secrets.

[00:10:18] Roxanne Bocyck: We always knew that she came from Poland and the steerage of the ship and went through Ellis Island. But what we didn't know is she originally had come under an arranged marriage. She had ended up in a paper mill town. Now, mind you, this is in the early twenties. up in the Adirondacks of New York. And can you imagine this place?

[00:10:40] Immigrants this whole paper mill built this town around it. There were over 600 employees. But what happened to my grandmother up there fascinated me. It was in the newspapers. So when I was going to college, I looked it up on the microfiche. Because I [00:11:00] started out

[00:11:01] Scott Maderer: for the young people listening, microfiche was this big machine where you could go look at basically pictures of old newspapers and things and you would slide through.

[00:11:12] It was all manual. It wasn't that it's not Google. You didn't type it into a box and it popped up just in case for any of the younger listeners. You have no idea what a microfiche is. I know. Think of it as a really small. Google.

[00:11:27] Roxanne Bocyck: The internet was just still in its early stages, even I, an iPhone was in its early stages and so I came across the newspaper articles and I was like, oh my God, oh my gosh.

[00:11:40] And I thought, one day I've got to write this story. It was just fascinating to me.

[00:11:45] Scott Maderer: Okay. So you had started it running down the, where did she come from? How, what was her story? And then it hooked you as you went. Yeah. So before we dive a little bit more into the book one of the questions that I like to [00:12:00] ask and like to highlight for folks is how our life journey and our faith journeys intersect and overlap.

[00:12:06] So how did your faith journey affect your life journey? And then how did your life journey affect your faith journey as you went through things?

[00:12:15] Roxanne Bocyck: I love that question. I was raised Catholic and all my life I believed in God, but for whatever reason, after I married and started a family, church was there it was there, but we didn't really go except maybe at Christmas and Easter time but it wasn't until I started writing my novel.

[00:12:35] Catherine's dream that the church became a part of my life again, because the book, as I said, is based on a true story about my grandmother, and I found myself going back to the church that I used to attend with her. And and in the story, even church is an important part of the story, because many people who immigrated to America.

[00:12:57] Back in the 19th and 20th [00:13:00] centuries, church was a big part of their life. In fact, I'm sure your listeners know a lot of churches in their town were built in the 1800s and early 1900s. So it just started to become a bigger part of my life. And I like to think writing the book brought me back to it.

[00:13:16] I like that. And now we're members of the church and we go all the time. So I'm really enjoying it.

[00:13:23] Scott Maderer: The book, like you mentioned is it's fiction, it's a novel, but it's also based on a real story and real people and your family history and things. What truths did you learn as you were writing the book, or what kind of came to you as you were working on it that were things that you wanted to share in this fictional book, but that they're true to our real lives, if that makes sense too.

[00:13:58] Roxanne Bocyck: One thing that [00:14:00] fascinated me was just our own heritage about thing. We all come from somewhere, right? Our ancestors. So just what these people did to take the risk to, to come to another country where they don't speak your language. That was a big thing and the traditions that they brought with them.

[00:14:20] I loved learning more about the Polish traditions, because as I said, my grandmother came from Poland, and I had fun interweaving them throughout the book, throughout the story. And I also, a big thing was, the mindset of the people of my ancestors, like taking that risk, like my grandmother in, in real life, she was 18 in this story, I make her 19, but she got on that boat by herself and gotten that steerage and went through Ellis Island and wow, ended up her brother had come before her, but still to do that at such a young age [00:15:00] that was pretty fascinating to me.

[00:15:05] Scott Maderer: And from, as you went through it what lessons did you take from it that you began to apply to your life?

[00:15:12] Roxanne Bocyck: I just. I've learned to appreciate history a lot more. I often think nowadays who's recording history now? We've got the history from our ancestors from years ago, a hundred years ago.

[00:15:28] But how are people going to look back on the history we're in now? And what are we doing now to just make sure that our heritage and our traditions live on? It made me the importance of that, made me realize that. And to know that despite the adversities that were thrown at me throughout my life through at Catherine it's our mindset that gets us through.

[00:15:55] Because Earl Nightingale would say you become [00:16:00] what you think about. And in fact, as I was writing the story, I incorporated a lot of those mindset things in there. And even Dan Miller would often teach us as our mentor.

[00:16:12] Scott Maderer: So you mentioned earlier that there were some challenges that came up in working on the book.

[00:16:18] What were some of the challenges that you ran into as you began to write this, to put this together? Sure.

[00:16:26] Roxanne Bocyck: As I mentioned, I had hired a coach, right? And as you like I say, Dan Miller taught us the importance of coaching and even you being a coach how much it can help people.

[00:16:37] So paying someone to come to, to coach me, that was the cost, say, of a Disney vacation was like, oh, my gosh but I had to look at it as a return on investment. Because which one's going to give me the better investment in myself? So that's how I looked at that as hiring a coach. [00:17:00] And then another hurdle was as a journalist writing or even newsletters or whatever, to get that point of view, to change it from now I've got the point of view from a character versus a point of view from facts, even though I incorporated both facts and the story just separating those two.

[00:17:21] That was a challenge for me. And of course, the discipline to write. Scott, like you just a book that you just finished and will be coming out in what, July? July. Yes. Looking it over. Okay. Is that what I want to say? Okay. Rewriting after all, I had written term papers that were 35, 40 pages.

[00:17:44] How hard can writing a novel be? And of course finding the publisher too. Now I knew I wanted, I didn't want to self publish. Finding a publisher was important to me. Again, there's [00:18:00] that mindset thing of knowing what you want and what you think about, right? Is there

[00:18:06] Scott Maderer: a reason you didn't want to self publish?

[00:18:09] Roxanne Bocyck: I just felt like have being published by a publisher was more like credibility or a feather in my cap. Not that someone who self publishes, that's still quite an accomplishment, of course. But I just wanted a more, I'll use the word, professional book. So that in the future, when I write other books, I can use that as a leverage,

[00:18:33] Scott Maderer: And do you plan to write other books?

[00:18:37] Roxanne Bocyck: Oh yeah, I do. I do. I plan, I have these letters that were written to my grandfather from Poland. I have over 120 of them during the sixties and early seventies. Now, one thing you only see is the, what was written to him. I don't have the letters written back and this is my, grandfather [00:19:00] who in real life, Catherine would remarry and it was that grandfather.

[00:19:06] So it's not from the anyhow, people have to read the book to understand. And I also I also have a book about school bus safety, but we can talk about that later if you want.

[00:19:19] Scott Maderer: So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I go there, is there anything else about the book?

[00:19:28] The book that you've written or the work that you do that you'd like to share with the listener.

[00:19:34] Roxanne Bocyck: One thing I'd like to share is it's about the journey of what you're doing, because when we do things, we never know where they might take us, right? How many times have we heard the story? I started doing this and now I'm this or that, and I never intended to go down that path, but it just appears to us.

[00:19:54] So it's about enjoying the journey and looking for those opportunities. [00:20:00] along the way. Okay. For example, I knew that As an author, I wanted to be around other authors, and I wanted to learn about publishing in the publishing world. So I invited people who were authors, already published, and authors who were a few steps behind me to join my Eagle Author Meetup group.

[00:20:23] And so I didn't intend on creating that, but I've been doing it now for over nine months, and it's a bi weekly thing that we do. And I really feel good about helping people take their, I call it, Making ordinary authors extraordinary that's my tagline. It's a mastermind group and I also started a book club at the Polish home here in Syracuse, where we read books that are either have something to do with Poland or are written by people of Polish descent.

[00:20:56] because if we want to be a writer, what do we have to do? [00:21:00] We have to read, right? So in turn, it helps me to read other types of books and genres and even books in my genre.

[00:21:07] And

[00:21:09] Roxanne Bocyck: as for my book, Catherine's Dream, I just feel proud that there's something in it for everyone. So for example, we have war and love and heartbreak and bootlegging and murder and a happy ending.

[00:21:24] What more could someone want, right?

[00:21:28] Scott Maderer: Now it sounds like you're advertising Princess Bride. I don't know if you've ever seen that film, but when the grandfather is selling to the son the book, he tells him it as adventures, swashbuckling, sword fights Something like that.

[00:21:44] Is this a kissing book?

[00:21:50] Because the characters kiss at the beginning. And there is actually romance in your book as well. So I like that. A little bit of

[00:21:59] Roxanne Bocyck: romance. A [00:22:00] special necklace, which I'm holding up to you in the on the zoom, but.

[00:22:06] Scott Maderer: My brand is Inspired Stewardship, and I run things through that lens of stewardship, and yet that's one of those words that I've discovered over the years means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

[00:22:17] When you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

[00:22:24] Roxanne Bocyck: To me, stewardship means leadership by serving others. As a good steward, I've always given more than expected, and some might call that people pleasing, but I call it being of service, because I feel like when I go the extra mile, or I do the things that aren't required, I know God is with me, and during those times when Les Brown would say, the pain will find you, which it does, I know God is with me.

[00:22:55] And one of our mentors, who I've mentioned several times, Dan Miller, who [00:23:00] wrote the foreword to your new book, always prided himself on giving people more than what they asked for giving that little extra. So being an eagle helping people to soar higher. And even in the face of adversities, Dan taught us to ask the question what does this make possible?

[00:23:21] So stewardship, like I say to me is leadership by serving others. That's what I've stewardship means to me. Awesome.

[00:23:32] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. Imagine for a moment that I invented this magic machine. And with the power of this machine, I was able to pluck you from where you are today and transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years.

[00:23:48] But through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life. Let's see all of the connections, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left behind. What impact do you hope you've left in the [00:24:00] world?

[00:24:00] Roxanne Bocyck: It's funny you should ask this question because in our book club we just finished reading a book called Surviving Savannah and it's about a steamship explosion which was named Pulaski.

[00:24:12] That's the affiliation to Poland and this happened 30 miles off the coast of North Carolina in 1838. And out of the 192 passengers, 133 lives were lost because the steamship exploded by a mistake that someone made a pouring cold water into the boiler. Boom, but in the story, it interweaves a tale that 180 years later, they find the wreckage recently the wreckage has been found and they brought up artifacts and the woman in the story present day.

[00:24:49] Boom. does a museum exhibit based on this sinking. And one thing she does is she puts little index cards together about people on the ship. What [00:25:00] did their life say about them? What did they do? The ones that survived. So I challenged my book club readers to write that about themselves. The question like you just asked.

[00:25:14] And this is what I wrote about me. So this is perfect. Roxanne Boycek overcame much adversity in her life. Like her ancestors before her, sometimes these adversities happen by chance. Others from decisions made not knowing the outcome. Here is a story, my story, of perseverance. Like her grandmother at a young age, she took risks despite believing others controlled her destiny.

[00:25:41] It wasn't until she focused on what she wanted that her life would change. She learned to have faith in God. Roxanne left behind a treasure of real life stories to inspire others to believe in themselves and to never give up. So I thought your question was perfect [00:26:00] for what we just did. I had to grab my index card and I tell

[00:26:04] Scott Maderer: people this is my version.

[00:26:06] So the question that usually people ask is what do you want your obituary to say? But That's always struck me as really morbid. So I tried to come up with a way of asking the same question and not make it quite what do you want people to say at your funeral?

[00:26:23] Roxanne Bocyck: There's a good writing prompt. There we go.

[00:26:26] Scott Maderer: That it's actually a very common coaching exercises to ask people to write their obituary, but I've always. I've always struggled with the idea of writing an obit. I'd rather write it the other way, which is the positive, a little more positive phrasing, so what's next on your journey? What's on the roadmap as you continue to move through the year?

[00:26:47] Roxanne Bocyck: Speaking of obituaries, we all think of our mortality from time to time and don't, what's the saying? All the best ideas are in the grave, right? That can happen, right?

[00:26:59] So [00:27:00] as a school bus driver, I had created a puppet show about school bus safety, and I used characters animal characters. So I'm holding up a puppet to Scott right now of a frog because I have created a children's book from it that teaches kids about respecting the bus and to make it easier for the driver to focus on driving safely.

[00:27:23] So for example, one of my characters here is Juniper the frog, because what do kids do on a school bus? They jump from seat to seat. And then there's a school bus safety hero. That's also in my book. I'm showing Scott his little cape here. And just to Is that a rhinoceros? Is that a rhinoceros? Yeah, his name is Toffee.

[00:27:44] And he wants to be a school boss because he's big and tough like the school boss. I gotcha. Okay. He's not

[00:27:50] Scott Maderer: yellow. He's not yellow though, but he's wearing a yellow cape. So that's okay.

[00:27:54] Roxanne Bocyck: So it's like one of these dreams that are in me and I want to find an agent for this book. [00:28:00] So as an author, I want to learn what it's like to work with an agent.

[00:28:04] So that's. What's next for me? And of course, at the same time, getting those letters out of my grandfather and putting the story together. But people are always asking me, Roxanne, what's the sequel? I want a sequel to your, to Catherine's dream. And you've got all these great ideas, sometimes we have to pray about it.

[00:28:24] And which one do I want to work on first? So yeah, a lot of exciting things happening for me.

[00:28:31] Scott Maderer: Awesome. So you can find out more about Roxanne and her book over at Roxanne Boisek. com and that's spelled B O C Y C K. Of course, I'll have a link to it over in the show notes as well, so you can find it there.

[00:28:47] Roxanne, anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:28:51] Roxanne Bocyck: I so appreciate you having me on this podcast and your listeners that I have a free gift for them. So if they [00:29:00] go to Katherine's dream, gift. com. They go there. I will send them a free ebook. They'll get a code where they can download a free ebook of my book, Catherine stream.

[00:29:14] Cause I would hope it would inspire them whether they want to write or whatever, reach out to me too. If you go to my website, as you just said, there's a contact me page, and I'm happy to help people on their author journey as well.

[00:29:27] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. If you're in that place where you want to surround yourself with other writers, Roxanne obviously has some groups that, that might be perfect for you.

[00:29:36] And then thank you so much for offering to give them a copy of the gift of the book. I've got a copy of the book. I read it before we met. had this call and really enjoyed it as well. So it, it is a it's a good read and it's I always like fiction that is actually based on real history to some extent, as opposed to just made up history, [00:30:00] or I'd rather, or I'd read something that's completely fantasy and has nothing to do with reality, I like either extreme. I don't like some of the stuff in the middle where it's made up, but you did a really good job of bringing in what to me was real world, real things that, honestly folks, the generation we're talking about is not that long ago. It feels like it's a long time ago.

[00:30:24] It's really not. It's not. How close in history the 1920s really is in the 19, early 1900s.

[00:30:33] Roxanne Bocyck: Especially learning about Poland, like things I learned about Poland. For over 123 years, it wasn't even a country. Yeah. It had no borders. It's wow, it's pretty. Yeah. I love that part too.

[00:30:46] Research. Absolutely.

[00:30:48] Scott Maderer: Thank you so much for coming on.

[00:30:51] Roxanne Bocyck: Oh, Scott. Thank you so much.

[00:30:58] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the [00:31:00] Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.

[00:31:22] com slash iTunes rate. All one word. iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures, develop your influence, and impact the world.